


The Second Alice

by RebeccaAnabelBurrows



Series: The Seven Alices [2]
Category: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms
Genre: and the story based on alice obviously, but they kinda are, i didn't mark reginald and alice as oc, just using their names there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 14:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebeccaAnabelBurrows/pseuds/RebeccaAnabelBurrows
Summary: Alice thanked the Cheshire Cat for his gift as she left Wonderland. When her daughter Edith's fascination for Wonderland equals hers, Alice can't help but wonder if allowing her direct female descendants to follow her path hadn't been a terrible mistake.The first chapter features Alice but the main story is Edith's here.





	The Second Alice

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear - this is a fictional work. Alice and Reginald had existed, but their portrayal here isn't faithful. They didn't have any daughters and I didn't check the names of their sons. Real Alice Liddell had a sister named Edith, and my fictional Alice did too. 
> 
> This is a multi-chapter story (the Seventh Alice will be too) but I endeavour to keep it short.

“It isn’t at all like the book. There are -” the young girl explained, making wide gestures. 

Alice took both her chubby hands into hers and shushed her, throwing alarmed looks over her shoulder.

“Enough !” she hissed.

Edith laughed and shook her pretty head.

“I can’t dismiss it, Mother ! I can’t ! I saw that extraordinary world -” the young girl said, bouncing up and down like a very young child. 

Her smile was so genuine and her eyes had a dreamy quality to them. Alice’s heart clenched. Her daughter hadn’t take much after her, but at this instant, she could have swear they had never looked more alike. 

Actually, Edith had her paternal grandmother’s looks and her father and her shared the same dimpled grin.  
Her eyes were the brown of the Hargreaves’. Even if Reginald’s eyes were far more calculating, untrusting. By all accounts, he wasn’t an easy man. Edith was of a softer nature, and cheered the whole household.

Her mother held her by the shoulders, frightened blue eyes meeting scowling brown ones. Alice’s grip was firm and her lips formed a thin, worried line, echoed by her forehead.

Alice would turn forty in a short time. She was no longer deluded about this world and what it does to people like her, like her daughter. Like them. Women especially. 

She knew she had been lucky. She wouldn’t take risks with her eldest. Edith had such a pure heart. Alice knew she would sound frantic as soon as she would open her mouth but she couldn’t let her daughter sprout tales about Wonderland at wandering ears.

Edith had two younger brothers, and both loved to hear stories from her. Edith was a generous soul, always sharing her joys with the ones around her. Alice couldn’t let her. Reginald would have a fit if he heard about Wonderland from Charlie or Henry. Mr Dodgson’s book had been banned from the house. 

He would blame Alice for it, surely. But what if he blamed their daughter too ?

“Edith, my sweet child ! Please, forget about it. You have to. They would lock you up ! They would - For the love of me, say not a word on the subject anymore. Wonderland was invented by Mr Dodgson and I when I was very young, and this is all there is to know. It’s the only truth there can be.”

Alice Hargreaves was a bad liar. She didn’t practice enough to be any good at deceit. 

However, her child had to believe her. Edith was a lively, optimistic and obstinated girl. She was well liked by her soulmates and already had several suitors. She was a people person, which Alice had never been, except with Wonderlanders maybe.

At least, Alice’s loneliness had prevented her from talking about Wonderlanders with many strangers. Mr Dodgson expected. But she knew how people were. She remembered Reginald asking her not too nicely to stop with her childish behaviour and say farewell to her imaginary friends. 

The last time she went to Wonderland, she had bid her farewells. A few months later, she had given birth to Edith. 

“Fine, I will stay quiet then.”

Alice needed, a bit more at peace. She went to the window. They were in Alice’s library. It was smaller than Reginald’s one, but it was her own room, and Alice appreciated that.  
Edith often joined her and picked a book to read at her side.

However, Edith was not very good at sitting still and they often ended up taking a walk in the garden instead. 

“What were you reading ?” Edith inquired.

She had been so excited, just coming back from Wonderland, that she had not noticed her mother was reading when she went in the room. Alice was not surprised. Edith loved to share her enthusiasm, and it made her forget about other people sometimes.

“Some poems written by Emily Dickinson.”

The young girl laughed. She had received this answer so many times. 

“You really love those. Did Father gift you this collection ?”

You could see that it was cherished and had been read a fair amount of times.

Alice fought a blush, but not out of sentimentality for her husband.

Indeed, it had been a gift from Reginald. For Edith’s birth. She told her daughter so.

“Which one is your favorite ? Do you have one ?”

“Not really.” Alice lied. 

Edith looked disappointed but just shrugged. Poetry wasn’t her thing. She liked theater more. It had more soul.

“Don’t you want to know what it was like ?”

Alice closed her eyes. She should have known Edith would want to talk about it more. She sounded so excited. 

Alice thought of the dormouse sleeping on her pinafore. She thought of her arguments with the blue Caterpillar. She thought of the March Hare pouring her tea in a dirty cup. She thought of the goodbye embrace she shared with the Hatter. She thought of the last time she had seen the Cheshire Cat smile. 

She shook her head negatively. It still hurt. She didn’t want to tarnish her memories with someone else’s, she didn’t want to hear her daughter’s judgement on her friends. She wanted everything to stay as idealised as she had made it.

What they couldn’t know was that Alice’s Wonderland and Edith’s Wonderland had little in common. Sure, they were magical, nonsensical worlds, who had no rules and no laws. Not really. They shared some individuals, but not all of them, and Alice’s White Rabbit was fairly different from Edith’s White Rabbit.

Alice was thinking of her old friends. She wished they were happy. She wished they missed her a little but not too much. She wished they treated her daughter well. She wished they remembered… She wished…

“No.” she stated clearly as she turned her head so her daughter couldn’t see her wipe her eyes. 

Ignorance was bliss, they said. It was safer that way. She couldn’t afford to be tempted to return. She wouldn’t come back. She knew that, and she had a family to think of, now.  
What would happen to her kids if she left them ?

She felt Edith’s hand on her shoulder. She turned around.

“Mother ?”

She smiled.

“Yes, child ?” she said, stroking her daughter’s dark hair as if she was way younger.

“Why didn’t you stay there ?”

There. Wonderland. She could see that her daughter loved it too. There were like stars in her eyes when she talked about it, awestruck.

Alice wondered if she had inflicted a curse on her family. Edith would end up heartbroken, like she had been. She had never been the same after her last trip and she didn’t wish that for her daughter.

“I had a life here.” she said with a tight smile.

And when I had to make a choice, you were in my belly stayed unsaid. 

Alice loved her family. She liked Reginald well enough, even if she had given her heart to a Hatter in a world her husband didn’t believe in. She loved her daughter and sons. 

They helped her to mourn the loss of her friends from Wonderland and the fantastic world itself.

However, the joyous, unguarded soul that Alice possessed before her choice had died in Wonderland. 

“Some day you’ll have to make a choice. It will be a terrible choice, love.” she murmured once her daughter promised not to mention Wonderland either again and left the room. 

Alice took the book she had left on her armchair when Edith had entered the room. 

She opened it at a well-worn page. 

Much Madness is divinest Sense (620), she read. A smile formed on her lips.

How ironic that her husband had offered her an object that remember her so much of another man.

She read the poem aloud.

Much Madness is divinest Sense -  
To a discerning Eye -  
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -  
‘Tis the Majority  
In this, as all, prevail -  
Assent - and you are sane -  
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -  
And handled with a Chain -

A tear fell down her cheek. Memories were a terrible thing.  
She thought of Edith. What would happen to her ? Maybe Alice should have forbidden her to come back to Wonderland. Knowing her daughter, it would not have been effective. And Alice refused to be the one to do that to Edith. 

Alice would never ask her to sever her ties to Wonderland. It would be too cruel a thing.


End file.
